In an “open letter” to Libertarian National Committee chair Mark
Hinkle, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (USAF, Ret.) argues that the
Libertarian Party coddles a vocal party minority which favors foreign
policy interventionism, and that this raises real image problems for the
party. Former US Representative Bob Barr and Las Vegas gambling figure
Wayne Allyn Root, the LP’s 2008 presidential and vice-presidential
candidate, come in for specific criticism, and Kwiatkowski refers to the
LP’s activities in the 2008 election cycle as “shenanigans.”

Embracing statists and nationalists quietly within the
party is one thing; making them front and center as a leading voice of
recruitment and policy means that these types of unprincipled
non-libertarian perspectives become the LP in the minds of everyone.

Kwiatkowski, whose military career included work at the Pentagon and
with the National Security Agency, became a public figure after writing
about what she deemed the “corruption of intelligence” to justify the
2003 US invasion of Iraq. She was briefly a candidate for the
Libertarian Party’s 2008 vice-presidential nomination and has been a
recurring name in discussion of the 2012 nomination.